Wireless network has many advantageous features and is thus capable of eliminating many drawbacks of wire network. Recently, network topology systems based on IEEE 802.11 wireless networking have become the trend of current wireless network development. Such trend is significant in the point of how to develop wireless topology systems based on interconnection of access points (APs). However, no standard for IEEE 802.11 wireless networking based network topology has been published by IEEE because IEEE did not anticipate that IEEE 802.11 will develop so quickly at the time of publishing IEEE 802.11. Further, no relevant draft has been initiated yet. Thus, many network service providers have begun to develop their own wireless network topology systems.
There are significant differences in terms of physical features between a wire network and a wireless network. Services provided by a wireless network are different from that provided by a wire network. Also, a number of potential problems exist when a wireless network and a wire network integrate. Most of wireless topology systems developed by the network service providers cannot satisfy needs of vast users. The wireless topology systems are not flexible as compared with wire topology systems. Moreover, many problems about network establishment, topology establishment and maintenance, and network management are yet solved. Such problems also exist and are yet solved in developing wireless topology systems in a wireless distribution system (WDS).
For services provided to conventional wireless stations (STAs) by APs, they gradually cannot either satisfy needs of vast users or meet expectations of enterprises. Thus, it is desirable to improve AP such that different APs can connect together via WDS and even become a part of network equipment. WDS is part of IEEE 802.11 standard and is adapted to provide a mechanism for interconnecting APs in a network infrastructure. Typically, interconnecting APs in WDS is done manually by setting media access control (MAC) address in order to determine an established physical link topology between APs. However, such topology is neither flexible nor expansible in terms of structure. Moreover, the whole wireless topology may malfunction or create a loop when one AP is offline or power off. As a result, network interrupt occurs. Facts are that no standard is published for regulating the known WDS operations. Also, some WDSs cannot effectively cooperate with existing Ethernet. Moreover, WDS topology establishment is also complicated and inflexible when wire network is not under consideration. There is a rapid spanning tree protocol (RSTP) as IEEE 802.11 industry standard. RSTP is adapted to automatically develop a practical network topology with respect to Layer 2 based on a wire link established by network switch. RSTP was employed in wire networking and is adapted to dynamically create a topology with respect to Layer 2 having established wire link. However, RSTP was not employed in wireless networking because there are significant differences in terms of physical features between a wire network and a wireless network, a wireless network cannot dynamically provide the current wireless link to RSTP, and RSTP cannot create a network topology without loop accordingly. Thus, a need for improvement exists.